Church Rhetoric on Abortion and Why Members Are Generally Pro-life

Is the LDS Church more pro-life or pro-choice when it comes to abortion? This is an easy question, right? The Church strongly opposes abortion, so it’s clearly more pro-life.

But the answer isn’t quite that simple. As Peggy Fletcher Stack pointed out in a Salt Lake Tribune article a couple of months ago, the fact that the Church acknowledges any conditions under which it does not object to abortion makes it out of alignment with at least the most extreme versions of pro-life arguments and laws, which seek to ban abortion under all circumstances. As a result, she also notes, the Church takes fire from at least some pro-life groups for not being sufficiently opposed to abortion. Along similar lines to Stack’s article, a few years ago, TopHat of the Exponent framed the Church’s position as being pro-choice, and praised the Church for recognizing exceptions under which its policy permits abortion.

But of course, if you ask individual members what they think, Mormons (or American Mormons, at least) are more likely than any other group but one (Jehovah’s Witnesses) to want abortion to be illegal. This was a finding of the Pew Research 2014 Religious Landscape Survey. Of Mormons surveyed, 70% said abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances, putting us behind only Jehovah’s Witnesses at 75%.

(Note that this is just a graph I made from the Pew graph so that I could sort by percentage rather than by religious group name. If you follow the link in the paragraph above, you’ll find a graph with the same numbers.)

So what gives? If Church policy allows for situations in which abortion may be justified, why do Mormons generally lean toward banning abortion in general?

I’ve read through everything I could find on the Church website about abortion and abortion-adjacent topics (e.g., pregnancy, birth control, family size), and I’ve found a few general trends that I think might contribute to this outcome:

• Church leaders condemn abortion using strong language.
• Although Church leaders also mention circumstances when abortion is permissible, they offer so many qualifications that what they communicate is that these will hardly ever apply.
• Stories are never told of a righteous woman having an abortion, not even in the exceptional circumstances in the previous point. The only stories told about women and abortion are about (1) righteous women who refused an abortion recommended by a doctor, and (2) wicked women who had an abortion and later repented.
• Church leaders are dismissive of the reasons women might choose to have an abortion.

Pattern 1: Condemning using strong language

I’m sure this is not a surprising pattern to find. For the sake of completeness, though, here are a bunch of quotes from sources on the Church website that include strong language condemning abortion.

A 1972 Ensign article about abortion by Gilbert W. Scharffs quotes a June 1972 Priesthood Bulletin (the forerunner of Church Handbooks, according to Wikipedia) article that gives the Church’s official position on the issue. The statement says, in part:

Abortion must be considered one of the most revolting and sinful practices in this day

In 1973, not long after the Roe v. Wade decision, the First Presidency issued a statement on abortion that repeated this line. The statement originally appeared in the Ensign. It was also republished the following month in the New Era.

In an April 1974 Conference talk, President Kimball called abortion “a growing evil that we speak against,” and a “terrible sin,” and noted that “We place it high on the list of sins against which we strongly warn the people.” He also quoted the “one of the most revolting and sinful practices” line that appeared in previous statements.

In an April 1975 Conference talk, President Kimball again restated the “one of the most revolting and sinful practices” line, and added, in a statement that appears to implicate birth control as well as abortion,

We take the solemn view that any tampering with the fountains of life is serious, morally, mentally, psychologically, physically. To interfere with any of the processes in the procreation of offspring is to violate one of the most sacred of God’s commandments—to “multiply, and replenish the earth.”

In an October 1975 Conference talk, President Kimball quoted the 1973 statement with the “one of the most revolting and sinful practices” line. Interestingly, in quoting the statement, he even felt the need to intensify the Church’s opposition, changing “The Church opposes abortion” in the original statement to “The Church [vigorously] opposes abortion” (brackets in original). He also said that “we decry abortions and ask our people to refrain from this serious transgression.”

In a 1975 Conference talk devoted entirely to the topic of abortion, Elder Faust said, “making it legal to destroy newly conceived life will never make it right. It is consummately wrong.”

In 1976, the First Presidency issued another official statement that was virtually identical to the 1973 statement. It included the line about abortion being “one of the most revolting and sinful practices in this day.”

Also in 1976, the Church released a filmstrip about abortion to be shown to all English-speaking Church members. It included President Kimball counseling members, “My brothers and sisters, I want you to know that abortion is wrong.” [italics in original]

In an October 1976 Conference talk, President Kimball said, “Abortion, the taking of life, is one of the most grievous of sins.”

In another October 1976 Conference talk, Elder Hales quoted extensively from a letter he had received from a woman who had had an abortion. She referred to “the terrible things I had done” and said that “my sins were grievous before the Lord.”

In a 1979 Conference talk, Theodore M. Burton of the Seventy compared abortion to child sacrifice:

We shudder as we read in Leviticus of the sacrifices of idol worshipers of that time who fed their children into the fiery maw of the iron god Molech. Is personal selfishness which results in abortion any less repulsive to God, as modern people through abortion offer the sacrifice of their children to their idol of selfish materialism?

In a 1980 Conference talk, President Kimball said that “abortion has reached plague proportions.”

The description of abortion as “one of the most revolting and sinful practices” in the 1973 First Presidency statement that was quoted so often in the 1970s also made it into the 1983 General Handbook. We know this because the Handbook was quoted in a 1985 Ensign article by General Relief Society First Counselor Joy F. Evans. Here is the relevant quote: “The Church opposes abortion as one of the most revolting and sinful practices of this day.”

In a 1985 Conference talk devoted entirely to the subject of abortion, Elder Nelson said referred to abortion as a “baleful war” that “is of epidemic proportions and is waged globally.”

In a 1986 Conference talk, Elder Packer described abortion (along with unmarried sex and child abuse) as “transgressions of enormous proportion.”

In a 1990 Conference talk, Elder Packer said that other than the few exceptional circumstances the Church recognized, “abortion is clearly a ‘thou shalt not.'”

The Eternal Marriage Student Manual quotes a 1991 supplement to the 1989 General Handbook of Instructions that said in part, “The ultimate act of destruction is to take a life. That is why abortion is such a serious sin.”

In a 1994 Ensign article, Elder Brough of the Seventy quoted President Kimball’s 1976 statement (quoted above), and also quoted Ezra Taft Benson as saying, “We oppose and abhor the damnable practice of wholesale abortion.”

In a 1995 First Presidency message in the Ensign, President Faust called abortion an “evil practice.”

In a 1995 Conference talk, Elder Woolsey of the Seventy said, “[Satan] says individual agency is justification for the destruction of a human life through abortion.”

In a 1998 Conference talk, President Hinckley said, “Abortion is an ugly thing, a debasing thing, a thing which inevitably brings remorse and sorrow and regret.”

In another 1998 Conference talk, he also said, “Abortion is an evil, stark and real and repugnant, which is sweeping over the earth.”

In a 2005 Ensign article, an unnamed author said that abortion “encourage[s] selfishness and the promiscuous use of the powers of procreation.”

Elder Nelson subtitled his 2008 Ensign article on abortion “an assault on the defenseless.”

In a 2012 Conference talk, Elder Oaks said, “Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil.”

In a 2017 BYU devotional address (also printed in the Ensign in 2018), Elder Cook called abortion “deplorable conduct.”

The Gospel Topics entry on abortion on the Church’s website says that “Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God.”

Finally, many of the sources I’ve quoted above cite D&C 59:6, and compare abortion to murder: “Thou shalt not . . . kill, nor do anything like unto it.”

Pattern 2: Heavily qualifying circumstances under which abortion is permissible

Here is the section on exceptional circumstances from the Gospel Topics entry on abortion on the Church’s website.

Church leaders have said that some exceptional circumstances may justify an abortion, such as when pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.

The first type of qualification is that, for the second and third circumstances, there is strong emphasis on how the severity of the risk must be great, and the person making the judgment must be authoritative. The statement could more simply say something like “when the life or health of the mother is in jeopardy, or when the fetus has severe defects.” But instead it says “when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have severe defects…”

Along similar lines, in the First Presidency’s 1973 statement, the mention of the rape exception includes an additional clause: “where the pregnancy was caused by rape and produces serious emotional trauma in the mother.” So not just rape, but rape that causes emotional trauma, and not just any emotional trauma, but serious emotional trauma.

In a 1990 Conference talk, in describing the second circumstance under which abortion might be permissible (mother’s life or health at risk), Elder Packer said,

where competent medical authorities certify that the life of the mother is in jeopardy

This is even more restrictive than the typical Church statement, as he says that only if the life of the mother (not the health) is in jeopardy, and only if a medical authority not only knows, but certifies this fact, can abortion be justified.

Occasionally, GAs have gone beyond adding qualifiers and just outright said things that directly weaken the exceptions that the Church does officially allow. The first instance of this that I found is Elder Faust in his 1975 Conference talk, where he cited the situation where the fetus might have birth defects, but then pooh-poohed it:

Some justify abortions because the unborn may have been exposed to drugs or disease and may have birth defects. Where in all the world is the physically or mentally perfect man or woman?

Along the same lines, in a 2008 Ensign article, Elder Nelson cast some doubt on doctors’ ability to detect fetal abnormalities, and in so doing, weakened the Church’s usual third exceptional circumstance:

Some argue for abortion because of fear that a child may have a congenital malformation. Surely the harmful effects of certain infectious or toxic agents in the first trimester of pregnancy are real, but caution is needed in considering the termination of a pregnancy. Life has great value for all, including those born with disabilities. Furthermore, the outcome may not be as serious as postulated.

Another instance is of a GA weakening one of the exceptional circumstances also comes from Elder Nelson, who, in his 1985 Conference talk, referred to the situation where a woman’s life is at risk:

When deemed by competent medical authorities that the life of one must be terminated in order to save the life of the other, many agree that it is better to spare the mother.

He didn’t go what might seem like the obvious direction and quote the Church’s official statement. Instead, he weakened this exception by just saying that “many agree” that abortion would be acceptable under these circumstances, while appearing to refuse to opine himself on whether or not this was a good idea.

The second type of qualification is that, as the Gospel Topics entry on abortion continues after listing exceptions when abortion might be permissible, even these circumstances are not considered automatic grounds for abortion.

But even these circumstances do not automatically justify an abortion. Those who face such circumstances should consider abortion only after consulting with their local Church leaders and receiving a confirmation through earnest prayer.

This point about abortion not being automatically okay even under the three exceptional circumstances is repeated almost verbatim whenever the exceptional circumstances are mentioned. They are virtually if not completely identical, so I won’t quote them all. Here’s the Handbook 2 section on abortion as an example:

Even these exceptions do not justify abortion automatically. Abortion is a most serious matter and should be considered only after the persons responsible have consulted with their bishops and received divine confirmation through prayer.

Returning again to Elder Packer’s 1990 Conference talk, after mentioning circumstances under which abortion might be permissible, he concludes that

Even in these very exceptional cases, much sober prayer is required to make the right choice.

So not only prayer, but sober prayer, is required.

The third type of qualification is that, even when bringing these exceptions up, Church leaders often go out of their way to emphasize how rarely they are applicable. For example, the Gospel Topics entry on abortion quoted above refers to “some exceptional circumstances” that may make abortion permissible. The word “exceptional” indicates that these circumstances are seen as being unusual.

The most common descriptor for circumstances under which abortion might be permissible is “rare.” The First Presidency statement of 1973 refers to the health of the mother and rape exceptions as “rare cases.” I think every statement, whether official from the Church, or from an individual GA, repeats that these exceptions are rare. For example, the 1991 Church statement said exactly the same thing as the 1973 statement, calling the exceptions “rare cases.”

In his 1975 Conference talk quoted above, Elder Faust cited a secular authority in arguing that situations where abortion was medically necessary were rare:

Experts tell us that the necessity of terminating unborn life is rarely justified for purely medical or psychiatric reasons. (Dr. James H. Ford, M.D., California Medical Journal, Nov. 1972, pp. 80–84.)

In a 1984 “I Have a Question” feature in the Ensign, a Church PR person refers to “extremely rare instances when an abortion may be justified.”

In his 1985 Conference talk quoted above, Elder Nelson called situations where a mother’s life is at risk because of a pregnancy “rare, particularly where modern medical care is available.”

Some speakers have gone beyond the usual descriptor of “rare” to explain just how unusual such cases are. For example, in the 1974 Conference talk mentioned previously, President Kimball sounded unconvinced that any such circumstances would exist at all. He said, “If special rare cases could be justified, certainly they would be rare indeed.”

In President Hinckley’s 1998 Conference talk already quoted above, he listed the usual exceptions under which abortion might be permissible, but then said, “But such instances are rare, and there is only a negligible probability of their occurring.”

In a 1999 BYU devotional address that was reprinted in the March 2000 Liahona, Elder Oaks called the three Church-sanctioned exceptions first “very rare” and then later “extremely rare.”

In the 2008 Ensign article already quoted above, Elder Nelson repeated a line from his 1985 Conference talk about how rarely pregnancy is life-threatening to a woman, but he intensified it by changing from “rare” in his 1985 talk to “very rare”:

circumstances in which the termination of pregnancy is necessary to save the life of the mother are very rare, particularly where modern medical care is available.

Pattern 3: Sharing stories of righteous women refusing abortions (and wicked women getting them)

In a 1976 Conference talk, Elder Hales shared the story of a woman who had quit going to church, had sex with a fellow inactive member, got pregnant, and had an abortion before she eventually decided to go to her bishop and repent.

In a 1980 Conference talk, Elder Featherstone of the Seventy shared the story of a woman who came to him to confess her guilt over having had an abortion many years before. He wrote to the First Presidency on her behalf and they responded that she was forgiven.

In his 1985 Conference talk quoted above, Elder Nelson told the story of a woman who contracted German measles in the first trimester of a pregnancy. Her doctor advised her to get an abortion because the fetus would likely have been harmed by the disease, but after talking to her stake president, she refused. When the baby was born, she was deaf but otherwise healthy. Not only that, but it turned out that she was a genius. Elder Nelson also repeated this story in his 2008 Ensign article cited above.

In this 1988 Ensign story, a woman was strongly advised by her doctor to have an abortion because she had been taking medicine for another condition when she became pregnant, and the medicine was very likely to cause birth defects. She and her husband instead went to their bishop, who gave her a blessing promising that the baby would be born healthy. And she was.

In a 1989 Conference talk, Elder Kay of the Seventy tells of a pregnant woman who was told that the child she was carrying would have Down syndrome. Her doctors recommended that she have an abortion. She refused. Her father gave her a blessing and pronounced that the baby would not be born with Down syndrome, and indeed, she was born without suffering from it.

In this 1990 Ensign story, a pregnant woman was advised that the only way she could survive was to have an abortion. The doctor also told her that her pregnancy might not even be viable. She refused the abortion and carried the baby to term. Both she and her baby had health issues after the birth, but they recovered fully.

This 1991 Ensign story is told by a man whose wife was diagnosed with aggressive, inoperable breast cancer while she was pregnant with her third child. The doctor recommended that she have an abortion, but she refused. She was treated with radiation. Her son was born a month early, but healthy. Less than a year later, though, her cancer returned, and she died shortly after her son’s first birthday.

This 1996 Ensign story is about a family that was excited to be able to adopt a child. In discussing her infertility, the narrator explains that when she was pregnant with her first child, the doctor had recommended abortion because she was not likely to be able to carry him to term. She refused, and her son was born healthy.

In this 2001 Ensign story a woman tells of learning when she was pregnant that her child would have severe birth defects that wouldn’t allow him to live long after birth. She refused her doctor’s suggestion to have an abortion. She gave birth to her son, and he lived for one week.

In this 2003 Ensign story, a woman contracts rubella in the first trimester of her pregnancy. The doctor warns that this means that the baby will likely have disabilities. The mother carries her to term and she is born without disabilities.

In this 2009 Ensign story, a woman who was pregnant with twins was advised by her doctor that, because of a series of complications, it was unlikely that they would survive to birth. The pregnancy was also a threat to her health, as she was likely to be hospitalized. The doctor recommended abortion. She refused. She ended up being hospitalized for the last two months of the pregnancy. The babies were born at 33 weeks, but after some time in intensive care, they were fine.

In this story accompanying a photo from 2009 on the Church history website, a man tells of how he and his wife’s third child was diagnosed with Down syndrome and a heart defect while she was still in utero. The doctor recommended an abortion, but the couple refused. Their daughter was born and had reached the age of two by the time of the story, although there were still concerns about her heart.

This 2015 Church News story, although it doesn’t mention abortion, fits with many of the other stories about abortion, because it tells of a couple who valued the wife’s childbearing over her health. Here’s the relevant bit:

Sister Thomas was experiencing a health problem. Surgery recommended by more than one doctor to correct it would have precluded any more children coming to the family.

“After considerable discussion and much prayer we decided not to proceed with the suggested surgery, largely because of the strong and recurring feelings that Beverly had that we would have more children,” Brother Thomas recounted.

In this 2018 Ensign story, a woman was advised by her doctor to have an abortion because testing showed that the fetus had a rare genetic disorder. After consulting with her bishop, she refused and carried the baby to term. Her daughter turned out not to have the disorder the doctors had thought she did, but instead another less severe disorder.

Pattern 4: Speaking dismissively of women’s reasons for getting an abortion

In discussion abortion, Church leaders have a long history of referring to the motivation for most abortions as “convenience.” For example, in a 1975 Conference talk referred to above, President Kimball said,

This Church of Jesus Christ opposes abortion and counsels all members not to submit to nor participate in any abortion, in any way, for convenience or to hide sins.

In another Conference talk the previous year, he offered a slightly longer list of reasons women might have abortions:

It is almost inconceivable that an abortion would ever be committed to save face or embarrassment, to save trouble or inconvenience, or to escape responsibility.

In his 1985 Conference talk quoted above, Elder Nelson referred to a study that found that only three percent of abortions were performed for reasons he considered justified (rape or life of the mother at risk), but

The other 97 percent are performed for what may be termed “reasons of convenience.”

The 1991 Church statement on abortion expanded “convenience” to “personal or social convenience”:

We have repeatedly counseled people everywhere to turn from the devastating practice of abortion for personal or social convenience.

The Gospel Topics entry on abortion on the Church website and the Handbook 2 section on abortion and the Church Newsroom statement on abortion also all similarly refer to “elective abortion for personal or social convenience.”

Summary

From these patterns of messages–condemning abortion using strong language, adding many qualifiers to situations that they say may warrant abortion, telling only stories of wicked women having abortions and righteous women refusing them, and minimizing women’s reasons for having an abortion–GAs convey a clear message. They really hate abortion.

I think they also convey quite clearly that they don’t much believe in the exceptional circumstances under which they’ve consistently said abortion might be acceptable. They say over and over how “rare” or even “extremely rare” these circumstances are, and even tellingly in one case, refer to them as “negligible.” It’s difficult for me to see the repetition of the three exceptional circumstances as being anything more than lip service. They put them out there to avoid seeming unreasonably cruel to women, but then they carefully qualify them in so many ways that it seems like they don’t want them to ever actually be cited as a reason for an actual abortion.

I think that it’s clear why Mormons are so pro-life. Even though GAs typically don’t actually come out and say that members need to vote for candidates who will pass laws that restrict abortion (with occasional exceptions like this talk where Elder Oaks scolded people for opposing abortion personally but not politically), they do make clear from what they say about abortion that they oppose it so much and that they believe that the circumstances under which it might be justified are so rare that most members reasonably conclude that they are being called to favor the most extreme pro-life legislation.

Some comments

I think GAs also send a clear message to women. They are saying that righteous women don’t have abortions, and never mind the exceptions. Don’t think those exceptions ever actually apply. I think this message is made particularly clear by the repeated insistence that they are “rare” or “extremely rare” and the fact that they’ve made sure that Church materials never contain a story of a righteous woman who prayerfully decided to have an abortion under an exceptional circumstance listed in the Handbook. Instead, there are many stories of women who are told that their fetus is severely deformed, or they are told that their own health is at risk, but they turn abortion down anyway. The norm is obvious. Women aren’t supposed to get (or even consider, really) an abortion, regardless of the circumstances.

This message is reinforced by all the statements about how women are getting abortions for reasons of “convenience.” The suggestion here is that pregnancy is a mere inconvenience that women pettily want to avoid. Tellingly, this is quite different from how it’s described when GAs are putting women on a pedestal. For example, Elder Holland, in a 2015 Conference talk, called motherhood a “staggering feat,” in part because of “prenatal carrying.” Elder Nelson in a 1984 Conference talk, praised his wife for, among other things “her sacrifices to bring our ten wonderful children into this world.” Elder Oaks in a 2009 Conference talk, said “Mothers suffer pain and loss of personal priorities and comforts to bear and rear each child.”

The discussion of how important it is that, even if one of the exceptional circumstances listed in the Handbook applies, a woman still needs to counsel with her bishop and pray, because abortion isn’t “automatically” okay also conveys from GAs to women: We don’t trust you. We know you aren’t taking this seriously enough if we don’t force you to. The tone is very much the same as the tone of many laws passed in US states that only allow a woman to have an abortion after she’s had an ultrasound, or read anti-abortion literature, or come in to a clinic one day and returned again after a waiting period. And of course, the expectation is the same too. GAs and (largely male) lawmakers think that if they just force women to take it seriously, they’ll decide against having an abortion.

It’s also worth considering the broader context of Church rhetoric about women’s roles. Women are told in the Church that their most important role–their defining role–is to be mothers. Examples are plentiful; I’ll just cite a couple. Just last year in Conference, President Oaks told women, “Latter-day Saint women understand that being a mother is their highest priority, their ultimate joy.” And in 2001, Sherri Dew famously gave a Conference talk to women titled “Are We Not All Mothers?” Young married couples are counseled to have children, and to do so quickly, and never mind any other competing priorities such as finishing school or getting out of debt. (For some examples, see the GA quotes on birth control in the Eternal Marriage Student Manual. It’s also interesting to note that some anti-abortion statements are also implicitly anti-birth control, liked Elder Oaks’s statement that “one of the most serious abuses of children is to deny them birth.”) Church materials feature plenty of stories of couples who felt like even though they had X number of children, their family wouldn’t really be complete until they had X+1 or X+2, but there are no stories of couples who decided to have child number X+1 and as a result, ended up divorcing or declaring bankruptcy. As far as Church materials are concerned, having children is all upside.

The clear message is that women should have children, perhaps if not at any cost, then at least at nearly any cost. In this context, it’s easy to see how even a woman who qualifies under one of the exceptions under which the Church says abortion might be permitted, is still under tremendous pressure to refuse to have one. After all, if her whole life’s purpose is to have children, why would she give up the opportunity–particularly in a way that’s condemned as being so thoroughly evil–because of minor issues like that her health is at risk, or because she was raped? Don’t faithful women make sacrifices to become mothers? Maybe her health or life isn’t that much at risk, she might rationalize, or maybe she wasn’t really raped but was somehow asking for it. And for that matter, doctors have been known to be wrong at times, and miracles have been known to happen. It seems clear that a woman in such a situation can easily face suspicion from those around her, and very likely self-doubt as well, that she’s trying to escape her divine responsibility with some “get out of motherhood free” card.

Also, on the topic of rape, I think GAs’ repeated statements about how the three exceptional circumstances are “rare” betray their clear underestimation of just how common rape is. I think #MeToo has made it clear that most of us have underestimated it, but it seems like GAs are behind even the mainstream view. In the past few decades, there has been an increasing appreciation of the reality that most rape is perpetrated not by strangers, but by people known to the victim. Some very recent Church materials (see this BYU devotional talk and this Church website article under “abuse”) evidence acceptance of this fact, but considering how rarely rape is even mentioned at a general level, it seems unlikely that this perspective shift is common yet among GAs. In The Miracle of Forgiveness, Spencer W. Kimball seemed to suggest the possibility that rape victims were at least partially responsible for their rape:

Even in forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position.

And even decades later, a First Presidency statement (included in a 1992 New Era article and a 1993 Liahona article), even after reassuring rape victims that they are not at fault, hastened to add a clarification that strongly suggests that acquaintance rape isn’t really rape:

Of course, a mature person who willingly consents to sexual relations must share responsibility for the act, even though the other participant was the aggressor.

Getting back to the topic of abortion generally, I think all the Church rhetoric about motherhood is central to the discussion of abortion because in some sense, abortion is such a dramatic repudiation of motherhood. A woman goes as far as starting the process of becoming a mother, and then she abruptly ends it. It’s no wonder that GAs who are the greatest proponents of divine gender roles are the most appalled by it. It’s bad enough, in their eyes, that abortion is ending a life. But what’s even worse is that it’s ending a life done by women who are also turning their back on their divine role.

Conclusion

I’m sure you can tell from my tone what I think. I wish the GAs really did believe in the exceptions they list in the Handbook. I wish they understood how common rape is. I wish they were open to seeing that their counsel actually leads to more abortion, because they advise women to put themselves in economically vulnerable positions by being SAHMs, and to have children quickly and frequently. I wish they took women’s health more seriously and paid it more than lip service when talking about abortion or family planning. How many women have had experiences like Winterbuzz, who blogged at fMh a few years ago about having an abortion when she had an ectopic pregnancy? She agonized over the decision, but she went through with it because it was required to save her life. Her pain at her pregnancy gone wrong was probably inevitable, but her pain because she had been taught at church that abortion was the same as murder was needless suffering.

In the end, I would be surprised if GAs move much on this issue in the foreseeable future. Certainly they’ve softened their rhetoric on it (no more calling abortion a “revolting sin”) in the past few decades, and spent less time even bringing it up now that LGBT issues have stolen so much of their focus. But as long as we have an all-male leadership that largely believes in divine gender roles, it seems unlikely that they’ll back off at all on this issue.

Another reason I don’t expect to see change is that the Church really doesn’t handle exceptions to rules well. I was reminded of this by a couple of comments on other blogs that I read recently after starting work on this post. Here’s Deborah Christensen commenting at BCC on the Family Proclamation:

The Proclamation does say that there are “individual circumstances that necessitation…adaptation” However the message I’ve heard from General Conference and the various wards i’ve been in say that those situations don’t really exist. Just like a woman becoming pregnant from rape is so unlikely that there is no need for abortion.

And here’s Dave B. commenting at W&T:

In LDS discourse, the overwhelming message is Keep The Rules and Follow The Rules Your Leaders Teach. Those who try to claim or invoke an exception are generally (as in pretty much all the time) seen as lazy, sinful, and on the road to inactivity and apostasy.

Rules we’re good at. Hard and fast and unyielding ones. Exceptions, not so much.